


a number of unfinished #colezra fics

by aerospaces



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies) RPF
Genre: Age Difference, Eventual Romance, Eventual Sex, Fluff and Humor, M/M, New York City, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 13:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11852862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerospaces/pseuds/aerospaces
Summary: Here are some of my unfinished attempts at Colin/Ezra AU's. Summaries posted per chapter.





	1. new york, je t'aime

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to crawl my way out of a writer's block and here are some of my unfinished attempts at Colin/Ezra. I still don't know how to tag things properly, sorry. I will get around to replying to those lovely comments on _i carry you in my heart_ I PROMISE! For more faffery and general Colezra/Gradence fangirlishness, please say hi at https://twitter.com/rtenenbaums!
> 
> new york, je t'aime - AU where Colin is a rich restauranteur and Ezra is in college attending NYU. They bump into each other one night after Ezra stumbles out of a bar trying to escape a handsy date, and sparks fly. A "New York, I love you"-esque tribute. written June 19th, 2017.

* * *

 

Of course, because it’s Lilah, she texts Ezra the address. The club is in a shady part of Washington Heights, situated between a Chinese general store and what used to be laundromat but is now just covered in boarded up plywood. There are fliers on the wall outside advertising obscure hipster bands with names like _Shake The Bees_ and _Alca Seltzer_ , and Ezra stands in line for a good few minutes before realising that one of the fliers is for his band — Sons — the font a neat monochromatic Helvetica under a grainy picture of Josh, Lilah, and himself, wearing tuxes. 

The glee is short-lived, however, when he’s buoyed by the queue behind him. Ezra shuffles forward with a mumbled apology over his shoulder as he smoothes the hair from his face and straightens his jacket. It’s his first gay club experience so he’s not sure what to expect here. Maybe he’ll lose his virginity tonight, or fall in love. Or meet a nice Jewish boy who didn’t go to Temple. Lilah has always accused him of being a desperate romantic, and maybe that’s why it’s taken him two years after moving to New York to finally decide to meet gay people the normal way: at a club. In his defense, it’s been a rocky two years ever since he’d hightailed it out of Jersey to attend NYU. With the band, and all the studying he does, and the temp job at the book store on weekends, he hardly has the time to date. 

There’s always Tinder, or its gayer campier cousin, Grindr, but Ezra’s always been wary of dating apps when they run the risk of exposing his preferences to his mother. Plus, there are all sorts of colourful characters in New York, and he doesn’t want to end up drugged and chained to someone’s basement in sexual servitude for the rest of his life. Part of it is paranoia, Ezra knows, cultivated by his very Jewish middle-class upbringing, while the other part is just sheer terror that out of the 8 million or so residents in New York, none were ever going to think he was good enough to date.

The line moves again, and this time Ezra allows himself to ride the ebb. Unlike other clubs in Manhattan, _hot bir_ d, spelled in lowercase and in glowing neon-pink lights, required an exclusive wristband to get in. Ezra affixes his to his wrist — rainbow-striped, of course — courtesy of Lilah’s cousin’s friend’s niece who moonlighted as a DJ at the club. He flashes the bouncer a smile, hoping to soften the man’s sullen glare but it only seems to agitate him more because he thrusts out a beefy hand impatiently.

“ID, please.”

“Right,” Ezra says, suddenly caught off guard. He’d almost forgotten. He pats around his jacket, until he remembers that his wallet is stuffed in the back pocket of his jeans. He shoots the bouncer a sheepish smile. “I have my ID,” he says, right before dropping his wallet on the ground. A chorus of groans erupts from behind him and Ezra fights the urge to roll his eyes and give the crowd the finger. Provoking a line of impatient queers is the last thing anyone should do if they want to live long enough. 

“It’s right here, it’s right — I got it! There you go, mister.” Ezra hands the bouncer his license — fake, of course, he turns 21 next year — with two hands like he’s handing out a gift card, fingers daintily pinching the edges. Having the bouncer verify his ID, shining his flashlight at the card and then Ezra’s face and then back again, seems hardly necessary, but either way, it’s the longest sixty seconds of Ezra’s life. He can feel his temples start to break out in nervous sweat, his palms and pits following close behind. 

Sunspots dance in Ezra’s vision when the bouncer beams the flashlight at his face again, his pupils dilating against the sudden glare. Ezra staggers a few steps back, blinking blearily to recover his vision, amazed he hasn’t gone blind from the way the bouncer keeps pointing his flashlight at him.

“Next!” the bouncer hollers before handing Ezra back his ID. He unhooks the rope cordoning off the door before jerking a thumb over his shoulder and chuckling.

“Thanks, dude,” Ezra mumbles, and his relief must show on his face because the bouncer throws him a sidelong glance, not long after — like he’s somehow cottoned on to the fact that Ezra’s ID had been fake all along but is simply letting it slide as part of a personal quota of charity. “Enjoy, kid. And try not to get into trouble.”

Ezra isn’t sure how to respond to that so he just nods mutely and squares his shoulders, pretending he isn’t blushing at all.

*

The club is hot. As soon as Ezra enters the door, he’s hit with a sudden wave of heat, like he’d just walked face-first into a wall of plastic sheeting. It takes him a moment to adjust to the temperature, doffing his jacket and folding it over one arm. _hot bird_ is just like any other hipster club, with a long granite bar wrapping one side of the wall and a chalkboard menu of drinks above it. The dance floor is as much of a grimy mess as it’s supposed to be, populated by people lurching around to the Billboard Hot 100 — except, unlike a straight club, it was anyone’s guess what combination of partners were moving around in the dark. Girls, crossdressers, guys with streaks of glow in the dark paint on their face all converged in one sinuous wave as they bobbed and weaved to techno remixes of pop songs.

Bare light bulbs hang in a zigzag formation from exposed pipes in the ceiling. A spiral grated staircase connected the first floor to the second floor landing where circular tables were set up around a smaller, cosier bar. The entire second floor had been sectioned off with a velvet rope, reminiscent of the one at the entrance. VIP, probably.

Ezra clicks his mouth shut. Because he’s too busy gaping at everything, someone bumps into him from behind, almost spilling their drink on his shoes. He calls Lilah from the washroom, one finger plugged into his ear because the music is so loud his ankles shake. “I’m in!” he yells, proudly.

“What! You got in?” Lilah sounds absolutely delighted. Ezra can picture her kicking her feet up on the bed and punching the air. “Come on, tell me what you’re wearing! And please, please tell me it isn’t a band shirt. At least be wearing a crop top or something. It’s your first gay club!”

Ezra glances down at himself and fingers the hem of his Rolling Stones tee, the lettering all but faded after years of use. He’d considered wearing glitter around his eyes, maybe donning a tiara and feather boa, but he’d mostly been worried about getting in at all, and not making a standing impression on a potential hookup. Besides, he gets enough looks on the train for constantly falling asleep with his mouth open, and he’s not sure he can pull off twinky and ditzy, anyway.He tugs at the spherical jade pendant hanging from a leather cord around his neck — three tugs for good luck.

“Uh,” Ezra says, scratching his neck. “I’m wearing leather pants?”

Leather pants he’d gotten at Goodwill, he doesn’t say, but he likes that they hug his ass quite nicely when he admires his reflection in the water-spotted full length mirror. He’d worn boots too, old and scuffed at the toe, which he thinks gives them added character, except he wears these nearly everyday so the novelty has faded. If it weren’t so hot, he’d keep his cargo jacket on, turning up the collar so that the comfortable fleece lining showed. 

“The last thing we need is for you to look like you’re bridge and tunnel,” Lilah says, as if sensing his thoughts. “And I mean that in the nicest possible way, Ezra.” Then she adds, “I am, after all, your friend, and highly invested in whether or not you get your ass pounded tonight.”

“What,” Ezra squeaks in indignation. “Lilah!” He blushes but can’t seem to keep the grin from his voice. It’s a nice thought, he’s not going to lie. That was kind of what he was hoping for tonight, after years of pining after straight guys who never give him the time of day.

“I bought condoms,” Ezra confides in a stage whisper, biting his lip and darting his eyes nervously at the door, afraid that someone might walk in and overhear him. He knows it’s a stupid move when there’s only a 5% probability of him getting lucky tonight. Coupled with how underwhelmingly he’s dressed and how his smalltalk often consists of referential jokes and lines lifted from movies, that dips his chances exponentially. At this point it’s just like blindly throwing darts to see which hit will land.

“I really hope I get lucky tonight,” Ezra says, leaning the back of his head against the sticky graffiti-covered wall behind it.

Lilah sighs in his ear, sounding mournful. Ezra can picture her rueful smile from her tone alone. “Me too, Ezra.” she says. “Me too.”

*

There are two things Ezra knows about himself for certain. One is that he’s very, very gay, and two is that he can’t dance to save his life. Prom would have been a nightmare, if he had deigned to go. Weddings were out of the question. At his bar mitzvah, he mostly sat in one corner while his cousins ran amuck.

He orders a drink just to take the edge off — whiskey, because, why the hell not. The bartender pulls an unmarked brown bottle from somewhere below the bar before pouring a shot into a low-ball glass filled with a single ice cube. He pushes the glass across the bar without spilling a single drop and then the bottle disappears again with a flourish all in the span of a minute. 

Ezra is a little impressed and only barely resists clapping. He pays in rolled up one-dollar bills before downing the drink in one go. Whiskey tastes a bit like tree bark and molasses, but the warmth shooting through him more than makes up for the rasp that burns his throat. It leaves a pleasant tingling feeling in his stomach so he buys himself another shot, and another. His fourth drink is a Tom Collins, which he nurses for half an hour while keeping one eye on the dance floor which has yet to empty of people. Half of the playlist consists of trance music, with a little mullet rock thrown in, so it’s easy to bob his head along and feign interest in the proceedings. 

The whiskey doesn’t hit him until much later, when the music starts to deepen and the place fills up with even more people: guys with hangdog faces trickling in from work, actors from Broadway still wearing their theater makeup. Ezra summons his courage on his fifth, or sixth, drink — he’s lost count — and dives into the fray with his eyes closed, so to speak. The air is thickest at the center of the action: body sweat has mixed with a number of other acrid smells, like pomade and stale cologne, and the combination it brews is distinct and dizzying. 

Ezra moves his body awkwardly, shuffling left and right, bobbing his head and snapping his fingers.He’s no James Brown but he can still copy what everyone else is doing which looks like a unique combination of salsa and grinding. Eventually, he loses himself to the rhythms of The Temptations’ _Next To You_ , and a remixed version of Enrique Iglesias’ _Hero_ , the latter of which he mouths the lyrics to while trying not to get caught in the undertow of swaying bodies. 

A few guys approach him throughout the course of the nightas soon as the inebriation hits. Guys with equally perfect hair and teeth, clear skin, with names like Ken, Chuck, and Brad. He lets them buy him drinks because his mother had always taught him to never turn down free shit. You never know when your next meal’s going to be, and very rarely do people do things out of kindness. _Carpe diem_. Of course, Ezra remembers her platitudes to be a little less maudlin, but it’s hard to distinguish his inner voice from hers with alcohol softening his thoughts. 

Brad hovers for the remainder of the night at his elbow, telling him about his startup IT company while Ezra laughs at all the appropriate intervals and tries to ignore the patches of sweat dampening Brad’s peach shirt. He’s ready to call it a night, covering up a yawn behind a fist, when Brad closes a hand over his elbow. 

The gesture is anything but casual. Ezra stares at Brad’s hand for a second, then at his perfectly chiseled face, then back at his hand again. Right, he thinks, feeling his heart speed up all at once, though for an entirely different reason. His vision starts to tunnel. 

“So how about we ditch this place and have a little fun of our own?” Brad says, jerking his head in the direction of the exit. If his voice didn’t sound as nasal before, it does now, and Ezra wonders how drunk he must be to let Brad feel him up when they had been dancing to Ignition just a few moments ago. 

Ezra laughs, already measuring the distance between the bar and the exit. Twenty strides, ten if he long-jumps. He clears his throat and stops Brad’s hand from climbing up his forearm, plucking his fingers one by one. “Would you excuse me one second?”

*

The night air hits him in the face like a bucket of cold water. As soon as Ezra staggers back onto the sidewalk, he’s accosted by a wave of dizziness. Half of it is roiling anxiety, while the other half could be the amount of alcohol he’d just consumed catching up to him. He can’t seem to remember where his phone is. When he finally manages to wrestle it out of confines of his inner jacket pocket, he finds that the battery has just died.

Ezra hunkers down on the sidewalk, anchoring himself next to a fire hydrant and closing his eyes. He still has class tomorrow at 9am. Maybe going to his first gay club on a week night was a bad idea and he should’ve simply waited until the weekend, braving the swell of traffic and a burgeoning crowd. 

“There you are.” 

“Oh, shit.” Ezra shifts his stance, rising to his feet so fast he knocks into a guy talking on his cellphone beside him. He shoots the guy an apologetic look, lifting both hands palm-up.

“Sorry, sorry — I—” Ezra doesn’t get to finish because suddenly Brad is swarming his personal space and grabbing him by the wrist. He feels almost bad about tugging his arm free because he’s sure Brad is a good guy and everything — and then Brad grabs his wrist again to yank him up so maybe he isn’t a good guy after all. Huh.

“Hey,” Ezra starts, ready to begin his tirade, but his voice is overtaken by someone else’s. 

“Is everything all right?” Ezra glances over his shoulder. It’s the guy on the cellphone. He’s finished his conversation, slipping his phone in the front pocket of his coat. In the low light of the street, Ezra can scarcely make out the details of his face: a strong nose, if he squints, and a pair of dark brooding eyes, the thickest eyebrows in fifty-one states pinched in worry or concern. Then there’s the hair, dark as shadow and swept to one side like an avalanche. The man is older than both Ezra and Brad, probably in his late thirties, but he’s handsome in a rugged effortless way even with his five o’clock shadow and the whites threading his hair.

Ezra blinks at him like an idiot, jolted by a sudden and sweeping wave of attraction. He doesn’t have a type, not since he realised he liked boys when he was eight, but this man, standing there insinuating himself into the situation in his long dark coat and expensive watch — he turns Ezra’s crank up just enough to be alarming. “Hello,” Ezra says, giving into gravity and swaying a little into him. The man blinks back, catching Ezra as he lists forward without warning. For a second Ezra gets a whiff of the man’s cologne as his face comes into contact with a broad shoulder — sharp and tangy like lemongrass. Or that could be his pomade. Or his sweat. Or —

Ezra’s introspection is cut short when Brad grips him by the elbow again, turning Ezra around to face him. 

“Yeah, we’re fine, buddy,” Brad insists, waving a dismissive hand at the man. “Move along.”

Ezra snorts, freeing himself from Brad’s nasty sweat-slick grip. “No, Brad,” he says, stepping forward and up on his toes even though Brad is a head taller. He punctuates each word with a jab to Brad’s chest. “You move along. I obviously don’t want to come home with you tonight. I’m not interested in your start-up company, or you, but… thank you for buying me drinks.” Ezra nods as he finishes, only to forget why he’s so riled up in the first place. When he looks up at Brad, Brad doesn’t seem to be cowed in the least, his mouth pulled tight in a sneer, but then Ezra blinks and his expression shifts to one of obvious nervousness. 

Ezra follows his line of sight and glances over his shoulder again. The man on the cellphone, Mr Handsome, is looking calmly back at Brad. Finally, Brad takes the hint and leaves but not before calling Ezra a vaguely offensive word.

“Well, that was rude,” Ezra mutters. He shakes his head, intent to sober himself up from the whole ordeal, but that turns out to be a bad idea because another spell of dizziness hits him like a punch in the stomach. Blinking doesn’t seem to help, and when he maneuvers himself into an upright position, his feet won’t move in the direction he wants them to go. The ground is tilting forward to greet him when something catches him by the waist and pulls him upright. 

It is, of course, Mr Handsome. And he smells really really nice up close. Ezra feels his entire body flush in pure unabashed delight, until his stomach begins to protest and bile threatens to choke his esophagus, then he purses his lips shut and presses a hand over his mouth.

“You all right there?” asks Mr Handsome, his voice overlaid with an accent Ezra can’t place due to his level of drunkenness. 

“Yeah, I’m all right,” Ezra assures him through the cracks between his fingers. When no reply seems to be forthcoming, he recants and says, “Actually, Mister, could you call me an Uber? I think I’m gonna pass out or about to throw up very unattractively.” 

He does both but in reverse order.

*

The last thing Ezra remembers before coming to is watching street lights flicker and swirl from the backseat of someone’s car. He shoots up in bed and is immediately assaulted by sunlight hollering through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The curtains are drawn, showing an impressive view of the New York skyline. That should’ve been his first clue, his tipoff that this wasn’t the shitty apartment he sublets from a nice Indian couple and shares with four other guys attending Columbia. Ezra clutches his head in misery, groaning as soon as his hangover makes itself known. He glances down at himself and sees he still has clothes on, but it’s not clothes he recognises: a clean t-shirt with a Mets logo in front, a pair of striped drawstring pyjama bottoms. 

On a stuffed Eames chair next to the bed, his shirt and pants are folded neatly, his boots half-leaning against the chair’s foot. He wiggles his tailbone: no pain. Unhinges his jaw and tilts it this way and that: nothing amiss. Odd, but also a good indication of what could have transpired the night before. His phone and wallet are on the nightstand next to the ornate table lamp. 

Ezra takes stock of his surroundings as soon as his feet touch the carpet: the cream-coloured walls, the art deco, the walk-in closet partially ajar, giving him insight into whomever owned the place. He takes a tiny peek, and sees coats. Hangers of men’s coats interrupted every now and then by a denim jacket or the occasional puffy leather sleeve. He pads into the living room, following the scent of breakfast cooking. 

The hallway is spacious, more than twice the width of his shoulders which is more than he can say for most New York apartments. There’s a lot of open space, and natural light filtering in through several windows fringed with rows of potted plants. The kitchen is exposed brick, with a curved granite-topped counter and pots and pans hanging from steel hooks above the sink. 

At the electric stove is a woman in what looks like a uniform of dark shirt and trousers, with a white apron fixed around the thick of her waist. She whips her head around and gives Ezra a sullen look as soon as he enters, raising a thin pencilled eyebrow and pulling her red lips together in an unimpressed line.

“Oh, it is you. You are awake,” she states. Ezra detects the hint of an Eastern European accent but before he can make sense of it, the woman points him to the table where the cutlery has already been set. A pot of coffee sits steaming next to a box of _Kashi Honey_ puffs and a sweating carafe of milk.

“Sit,” says the woman, the fleshy underside of her arm swaying when she jerks her hand emphatically. “I will make you breakfast. Mr Farrell will be joining you shortly. He is exercising as usual because he likes to keep himself fit for the ladies — ah, there he is now. Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, Mariya,” says the alleged Mr Farrell breezily, in a rich accent that does strange things to Ezra’s belly. 

Ezra turns to see the man from last night, Mr Handsome, decked in a threadbare grey shirt and Adidas running pants. The loose collar of his shirt exposes a pair of tanned collarbones and arms toned from just the right amount of exercise. He seems fresh from a run, his entire face flushed from exertion, his hair held up by a headband, making it stand in dark and grey tufts like nutgrass. 

When he’s standing close enough, Ezra gets a whiff of clean sweat overlaid with a hint of minty toothpaste. He blushes when Mr Farrell offers him a warm smile, accepting the newspaper Mariya hands him and spreading it across his lap. 

“I see you’re awake,” says Mr Farrell, making himself comfortable at the head of the table before pouring himself a mug of steaming coffee one-handed. He nods at the empty chair at his side before shooting Ezra a brief glance over his newspaper. “Sit down, and let’s have breakfast.”

“Are we still in New York?” Ezra blurts out.

Mr Farrell gives him a funny look, tilting his head to the side, his mouth quirking in the corners just a tiny bit. “Yes, of course, we are — 28th Street.” 

“You can’t be from around here, then,” Ezra says. “Because New Yorkers aren’t nice, and I’ve met a lot of New Yorkers.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true,” Mr Farrell says, a curious expression on his face. He smiles behind the rim of his coffee cup, and Ezra finds himself blushing. “New Yorkers can be nice.”

“Maybe you’re just an outlier, Mister Farrell.”

“Maybe so,” Mr Farrell agrees, laughing.

“Breakfast!” Mariya calls, elbowing her way between them with hardly any mercy before proceeding to set down plates of food on the table: a spread of eggs, bacon, hash, and black beans, enough servings to clog Ezra’s artery even at twenty. She places a bowl of pale watery porridge for Mr Farrell and a saucer of two perfectly boiled eggs still shining with moisture.

“Right,” Ezra says, rather awkwardly. He takes the seat proffered to him and fills his plate with toast and eggs, silently thanking his mother for not instilling an ounce of shyness in his body. Still - he can’t help but blush from time to time whenever his eyes meet Mr Farrell’s. Handsome men always made him shy, and Mr Farrell is easily the most handsome man in all of New York that Ezra’s ever come across, wide-shouldered and kind-eyed.

“You don’t remember anything that happened last night, do you?” says Mr Farrell, not looking up from his copy of The New York Times. If it had been the New York Post, Ezra would have judged him silently to death, handsomeness be damned. 

“It was wonderful and unforgettable. Thank you for a most riveting evening.”

Recollection dawns on Ezra in vague unbidden flashes, and he feels suddenly ill. “Oh my god,” he says, horrified.

Mr Farrell laughs. “Relax. Nothing happened. You passed out before I could call you a cab. I didn’t know where you lived. The ID in your wallet says you’re from Des Moines, Iowa,but it also says you’re 43 and named Derek D. Stroker.”

Ezra groans into his hands, peeking through the spaces of his fingers to shoot Mr Farrell an apologetic, sheepish smile. “It’s Ezra,” he says. “Not Derek. Ezra Matthew Miller.”

Mr Farrell smiles again. “Well, Ezra Matthew Miller,” he says, then stands to rifle through a leather wallet conjured seemingly out of nowhere and bulging with hundred dollar notes. He flicks out a smooth rectangle between his index and middle finger, extending it towards Ezra. “Here’s my business card.”

“Wow,” Ezra says, turning the finely textured card in his hands. 

“Too much?” asks Mr Farrell, whose apparent first name is Colin. His phone number, e-mail, and other contact details are listed under his name in a neat typeface. Otherwise the card is completely blank.Nothing, even, at the back. 

“No, no it’s just that no one’s ever given me their business card before, so… this is. _New_.”

“Marvelous. I just had these made, actually,” Mr Farrell — Colin, Ezra corrects himself hastily — says, “There are two sets. Maybe you could help me pick which one you think is best?”

He shows Ezra the other one, almost indistinguishable from the first except for the texture and cream shade. Ezra sniffs both cards and runs his fingers over the surface, testing the weight, the feel.

“This one smells better,” Ezra allows, and after giving each both a testing lick in a corner, adds, “And tastes great too.”

Colin seems impressed, his eyes alight. “Really now,” he hums. “Huh. _Interesting_. Thank you.” His eyes continue to crinkle in the corners as he puts away the other card and produces a pair of reading glasses next.

“Please tell me I didn’t do anything embarrassing last night,” Ezra says, because, well, it had to be said, free breakfast or no. 

“Besides pass out in my arms after violently vomiting on my shoes?” Colin peers at him through his reading glasses, his eyes squinted in amusement. 

“Oh, god.” Ezra buries his face in his hands, wishing his hair were longer to hide his shame. “I can pay for dry-cleaning and everything but it may take a little while. I’m just a poor college student and my part time job doesn’t pay very well.”

“You’re still in college?”

“NYU,” Ezra beams proudly. “Cinema Studies. I’m in my second year.”

“Impressive,” Colin states. He nods and then waves a dismissive hand in the air. “You can forget about paying for the dry-cleaning, then. You’ve already helped me enough with the business cards. Now,” he claps his hands before rubbing them together. “Breakfast is getting cold, and we don’t want all of Mariya’s hard work to go to waste, do we?”

Somewhere in the background Mariya mutters an emphatic _Oy vey_ but Colin barrels on with a very warm smile, “Dig in, Ezra Matthew Miller. And don’t forget the bacon.”

*

Ezra is late to his 9am class. He zips out the door, barely managing to catch the elevators closing, earning himself disdainful looks from some of the swankier tenants living in Colin’s building when he all but leaps into the lift at the last minute. He takes the subway to school where he catches the last twenty minutes of Comparative Lit, then he’s off to meet Lilah and Josh for lunch at burrito place on Laguardia. They eat their food in a pinch of shade, notes and laptops spread across the table and all over their laps. 

Ezra is vibrating in his seat, already well into his third cup of coffee, when he shows them Colin’s business card, the corner folded from having been stuffed in his back pocket. 

“So you’re telling me this guy didn’t sleep with you? At all?” Lilah scoffs in disbelief. “But he gave you his business card?”

Ezra nods. “He was really sweet and everything.”

“And everything?”

“I mean, he didn’t take advantage.”

“Isn’t that just common decency?”

Ezra shrugs one shoulder. “You should’ve seen him, Lilah.He was handsome. But not _People Magazine_ handsome. More in the vein of a literary hero, all noble and chivalrous.”

“Fascinating,” Lilah says, though she sounds like she doesn’t believe him, still. “Did he ride a horse?”

Ezra ignores the jab to add, “And he has an accent.”

“Oh, even better,” Lilah says flatly. “An accent.”

“What I don’t get is, why he took you home with him and fed you,” Josh says. “I’d have left your crazy ass on the curb, quite frankly. This isn’t Jersey anymore. Are you sure you didn’t sleep with him? He sounds a little sketchy.” 

Josh twirls the card over in his hands none too delicately but Ezra takes the card from him and slips it back inside the pocket of his jeans before he can inflict further damage. 

Josh doesn’t understand. Neither of them do. 

*

Ezra isn’t superstitious by any means but when _Sons_ lands their first paying gig in six months, he roots through his belongings for his lucky necklace. Roughly the combined length of his middle finger and entire palm and attached to a short leather cord, Ezra had gotten the necklace at a local flea-market for a measly buck. Lilah keeps calling the phallic pendant a dildo, but for Ezra, it’s a keepsake, a talisman to keep the bad luck at bay. He turns his side of the room upside down but never manages to recover it, and then remembers the last time he’d worn it had been when he’d gone to _hot bird._ He could’ve dropped it at the club, could have lost it on the mostly hazy drive to Colin’s apartment, but then, there’s also the possibility that he’d left it at Colin’s in his haste to leave for class and stuff himself back into his clothes. 

Another thing Ezra isn’t is making excuses to see Colin. He could text him, sure, but it’s already too late for that, he’s already on the train platform, and then climbing up the stairs two at a time, spat out onto 23rd street where a line of commuters stood waiting under the awning of a shoe store for the drizzle to dissipate. 

Colin’s high rise condo looms into view, a massive monochromatic monolith installed amongst towering hills of skyscrapers and rippling billboards. Ezra has to repress the sudden wave of resentment bowling him over. He joins the trickle of tenants headed for the revolving doors, collar turned all the way up though it does little to shield his face from the rain threatening to pour. He remembers Colin’s floor from the last time he’d been there, and waits with sweaty palms for the elevator to take him there. 

Once regurgitated to the topmost floor, Ezra smooths out his shirt, checks his hair on his phone, then his breath, before making the short walk to the only door at the end of the narrow hall. It’s a little bit like the hallway in _The Shining,_ long and never ending, rows of ghostly paintings adorning each wall. When he knocks, it’s Mariya who answers, armed with paper bags of birthday paraphernalia: plastic containers of confetti, paper hats and cups, rolls and rolls of checkered paper napkins. She looks like she’s on her way out, sunglasses donned along with a fresh coat of red lipstick. Her thinning blond hair is frosted with product, styled into big curls like a fifties bombshell. “You again,” she says. “ _Mal’chik_.”

“Ezra,” says Ezra. “You probably don’t remember me, but,”

“I am old, but not senile. And I remember everybody,” Mariya says. She holds up a finger. “Mr Farrell, he is not here. You are looking for him?”

“Well, yes,” Ezra says. Then he changes his mind. “Well, no. I’m looking for something I might have left.”

“I would help you, _mal’chik_ , but do not have time,” says Mariya. She shifts the weight of the paper bags from one arm to another and Ezra takes the hint and takes custody of both, knees nearly buckling from their weight. 

“Do you like birthday parties, Ezra?” Mariya asks, once she’s locked the door with a swipe of a keycard. 

“Only if there’s cake,” Ezra says, absently, still not sure where this is going.

“Then you will like this one, for there is lots of cake,” Mariya says. “Come, come. I will bring you to Mr Farrell. Then we can search for this thing you say.”

“A necklace,” Ezra tells her. “It kind of brings me good luck.” He blushes as he says this, toeing a furrow in the carpet with the point of his shoe.

“Luck is something we all need, indeed,” Mariya agrees as she pats him on the arm. “Now, come. We do not have all day and must not keep the children waiting.”

*

Against his wishes, Ezra finds himself invited to a children’s birthday party. Mariya is right: there’s cake — lots of it, DC-Comics themed too. There’s also a jungle gym and a ball pit, and a miniature petting zoo in a corner. How all of it fit into one floor is a mystery, but then again said floor is half the size of a concert hall: tall-ceilinged with big windows, and just the right amount of natural lighting. There’s always natural lighting if you had money in New York. 

Ezra lets himself be towed to the buffet table laden with plates upon plates of baked goods and bowls of rainbow-coloured candy, none of which should probably feature in a kid’s party if any sane adult wanted their child to live past ten. He helps Mariya stack the paper cups in a neat circle, pleasantly ignoring the screaming horde of children running past his legs and decked in superhero costumes.

“Mariya,” comes a familiar voice behind them.

Ezra turns, crunching into a pink sugar cookie. _Shit._

“Ezra,” Colin states, looking vaguely confused.

“ _Colin_.” Double shit.

Mariya throws her hands up. _“Oy vey.”_

“What are you doing here?” says Colin. He looks at Mariya, and then Ezra, then Mariya and Ezra again. He’s wearing a pale blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing his tanned forearms. The first three buttons of his shirt are undone, like he’s just showing off at this point how fit he is at forty-something. 

Ezra falters momentarily, forgetting to close his mouth. He recovers when Colin clears his throat. “I guess I’m kind of helping out,” he says. “I dropped by today to see if I’d left something at your place and Mariya was kind enough to invite me along the way.” He continues chewing his cookie, just so he has something to do because he’s so nervous. He wonders what he looks like: crazy probably. Hair lank and curling in waves around his face, rain dampening the shoulders of his jacket. They’ve only met once, by accident, and here he is, insinuating himself unannounced, like a complete stalker.

“Whose birthday is it?” he hedges, casting a furtive look around.

Colin laughs, sounding sheepish. “My son, James.” As if on cue, a boy, no older than five comes barreling straight at him, hugging his knees and demanding to be carried. Sandy-haired, dark-eyed, and dressed in a _The Flash_ costume. Colin’s expression weakens as he runs a hand through the kid’s hair before picking him up and patting him on the back. If Ezra didn’t want to throw himself out the window before, he did now. There’s something about men with kids that makes his knees wobble. 

“Say hello, James.”

James looks at Ezra, then away, shaking his head stubbornly. “Right,” says Colin, just as Ezra says, “Sweet kid.”

When Colin puts James down, James steals a cupcake from the buffet table before bounding over to the bouncy castle, screaming his head off.

“I didn’t know you had a son,” Ezra says, because he has no filter.

“I have two.”

“Oh.” Ezra blinks. “That’s… You have two sons.”

“Two different mothers,” Mariya explains later when Colin excuses himself to take a phone call. She shakes her head and breaks a sugar cookie in two, handing the smaller half to Ezra before dipping hers in a mug of tea. “A model, and a hippie. He likes them tall, and how do you say, long-legged.”

“I’m tall and long-legged,” Ezra mutters. He rests his chin on his hand.

“Eh?”

“Nothing,” Ezra sighs. He takes a bite of his sugar cookie, and when Mariya offers him her mug, dunks half before taking a bite again.

*

Ezra stays for another hour, in hopes of running into Colin again even though he seems to be perpetually swarmed by kids and their moms. Mostly their moms, hovering over him like moths drawn to a flame. Ezra gives up ever finding his lucky necklace at this point, as well as keeping up the pretense that he’s here for an entirely different purpose other than slipping handfuls of sugar cookies inside his bag when no one’s looking. When the last of the little guests have left the bouncy castle, Ezra glances left and right before shucking off his shoes and crawling inside, yelping when he finds that he isn’t quite so alone.

There’s Colin, sprawled on his back without his shoes on, hands clasped over his stomach, eyes closed. He cranes his neck and squints at Ezra with one eye. His hair isn’t quite as impeccable as it had been earlier, standing in awkward peaks everywhere. “It’s you,” he says, before letting his head drop with a soft thump. “Come in, there’s lots of space in here.”

Ezra pauses before crawling over on his hands and knees. The inflated floor gives a little jiggle as he slithers next to Colin and rolls onto his back, careful to not let any part of them touch. The inside of the bouncy castle smells like a combination of plastic and a kid’s vomit, but underneath everything is the distinct woodsy scent of Colin’s cologne. Ezra can feel him radiating body heat, from half an inch away though he may as well be imagining it. “This is nice,” he says, after a moment, eyes trained forward to the yellow and orange ceiling. He tries not to stare at Colin too long from the corner of his eye, and focuses instead on keeping his breathing calm and even.

“Isn’t it?” says Colin. He sounds delighted. “Jesus, I’m so fucking tired. Kids, you know? They give you a workout. You love them, but at the same time it’s just…” He trails off, shaking his head. Then he blinks one eye open.“Did you ever find what you were looking for?”

Ezra is caught off guard by the question. He squirms, made uncomfortable and put on the spot by Colin’s steady gaze. “I don’t know. That’s a loaded question,” he says, and then, when he realises Colin isn’t joking: “I’m not sure if you remember but that night at _hot bird_ I was wearing this necklace. It’s a huge thing, shaped like a —”

“A penis,” Colin finishes. “Is it shaped like a penis?” He makes a vague, complicated gesture with his right hand.“Because I think I know where it is.”

“It’s not a penis, shut up, _oh my god_ ,” Ezra laughs. 

Colin offers him a warm smile in return. His eyes crinkle in the corners, and it makes Ezra’s stomach flip just a tiny bit. “Well, what would you say it’s shaped like then?”

“A teardrop,” Ezra snorts. “Just, you know, — _bigger_.”

“ _Fair enough,_ ” Colin concedes. “If you say it’s a teardrop then that’s what it is.”

Ezra nods, sobering up. “Sorry for uh, showing up like this. It must be weird. We don’t even know each other.”

“You threw up on my shoes,” Colin reminds him. “My favourite pair of loafers. I’d say we’re pretty well acquainted, wouldn’t you?”

Ezra blushes, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from stammering. He nearly jumps out of his skin when Colin pats him on the thigh, casual, just two taps, before hoisting himself upright. “Your necklace is at the apartment. You can come by to pick it up whenever you’d like.”

“The thing is, I kind of need it tonight,” Ezra says, then launches into a story about how it’s pivotal to playing a good show. He’d worn it during his online admissions interview to NYU, then at the first ever show he’d played with _Sons_ which had finished with mild success and followed a series of other gigs in a number of shitty dive bars in Brooklyn. He doesn’t believe in luck, but he believes in sentiment, a real feeling. The necklace has been with him for years. He’ll feel lost without it, adrift. 

When he finishes his story, Colin gives him a thoughtful look, scratching the stubble covering his jaw. “Tell you what,” he sighs, “I’ll sort out the clean-up for a bit, and I’ll see you in…” He glances down at his watch, tapping the face twice. “Twenty minutes? Then we can swing by the apartment and get you sorted. Yeah?” Colin pats him on the knee again, casual but lingering.

“Yeah,” Ezra echoes, unable to stop the flush spreading across his face. “Okay, yeah. Sure.”

Colin smiles. This time, when he reaches out to clap Ezra on the shoulder, Ezra curls into the touch just a little bit. 


	2. april is the cruelest month

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> april is the cruelest month - tribute to one of my favourite films of all time, _Atonement_. written June 5th, 2017. Ezra comes back from boarding school, and has a summer romance that changes the course of his life forever (lol). The gardener is especially distracting.

 

* * *

 

 

Very little seemed to quell Ezra’s boredom. He had returned home from boarding school, intent on spending his summer in Rockport, but there had been a fire, just a week shy of his arrival, that demoted him to the family estate in Milburn. Smaller of course, than the family home, though the rooms there were certainly spacious, numbering twenty-two, but the household staff left much to be desired. There were five maids in total, a cook, a driver, a footman, and a gardener — though Ezra had yet to see the latter materialize — and yet, not one of them seemed entirely sure what to do with him when he arrived two weeks ago, straight from boarding school, still bundled up to the throat in his uniform and coat, sweating under his hat. They clearly weren’t expecting him, mistaking him, at first, for a family guest. A phone call had to be made, first to Ezra’s father, then to the housekeeper, who lived out of town, and had, mistakenly, brought the master key home with her. Ezra spent an hour in the sitting room, waiting for his room to be aired, another hour for his dinner, another for his bath.He was appalled by the treatment. It was almost midnight before all of it was seen to, and by then, drained of all good humour, he ordered the maid to leave so he could unpack his luggage himself. In a mood, he phoned his mother while up to his ears in bathwater, complaining about the stuffy room, the moth-ridden blankets, complaining even, about how unwelcome he felt. He wanted to go home. He hated New Jersey. The weather was awful and often unpredictable, prone to temperamental shifts at the drop of a hat. It was the least geographically relevant state in the country. His mother promised him it was only temporary. 

Breakfast was served the next morning at seven thirty, toast with jam, a bowl of watery porridge, overcooked ham. The eggs, at least, were a saving grace: soft and runny, just how he liked them. There was a bowl of fruit by Ezra’s elbow which he purposefully did not touch. He was allergic to strawberries. Ezra spat his coffee and watered it down with half a thimble of gin, a gift from a friend before they parted ways at the train station. He had laughed it off, then, and didn’t think he would need it, as he was only a social drinker, but here, now, he was grateful he had accepted. There were eight more weeks to this incessant restlessness. He could see himself going quietly crazy without the aid of alcohol.

Ezra took to walking around the house barefoot, moving from room to room, under the ever watchful eyes of ancestral portraits hanging from every wall. Some of the rooms in the house were locked, others full of old furniture covered in dusty sheets, some gutted so they could be repaired, the tables and chairs moved to the attic, the lighting fixtures bared, pale shadows on the walls where portraits once hung. The guest rooms had been undisturbed for a time, as had been the study, which Ezra had the maids clean top to bottom after an afternoon in the reading chair gave him the worst sneezing fits. 

Ezra missed Rockport, dearly, the comfort of his four poster bed, his teetering shelf of books, the powder blue curtains framing his windows which overlooked the sweeping lawn outside and the overgrown cherry trees that fringed the crumbling stone driveway. Their family home was nearly forty years old, squat and obscenely baroque in contrast to the estate’s more Gothic leanings; there was an artificial lake and island just on very the edge of the property,a tennis court, and a greenhouse tended by Ezra’s grandmother herself when she was in high spirits. The estate, in comparison, was ugly and severe, red sandstone and brick, characterized by high turrets and prickly finials. Holly scratched at the walls cruelly. The bronze fountain in the garden had grown so green with algae that Greek inscriptions were hardly visible through the verdigris. Everything was old, in a state of disrepair.

Ezra had planned to go on a boating trip with his father this summer but his father had phoned last minute to tell him their plans would have to be put on hold. He was overseas on business and didn’t seem to be coming home anytime soon so Ezra wrote letters to all his friends in boarding school — Langley, Willamson, Averin, even Caldwell — inviting them to the east coast though he knew most of them would be in Europe, enjoying their summer, as it were, leaving him bored, alone, and friendless in his own house. He had imagined this summer to be full, as it was his last year in boarding school before starting college in the fall. Clearly, he was mistaken. Clearly, all that lay in wait for him was terrible food and even worse company. 

*

The tedium was most unbearable in the afternoon, when the yawning stillness of summer was at its peak, and Ezra could stand neither his own company nor the company of his grandfather’s books — leatherbound tomes with crumbling pages full of Old World Philosophy and outdated Judeo-Christian platitudes, sometimes in Latin, even Greek. There was nothing to read that he considered worth his time, and the books he had brought from school he had already finished cover to cover. He craved a cigarette.His need for it deepened in the afternoon after he had woken from a thick humid sleep. Barely out of his dressing grown, Ezra upturned his luggage, crawling on his hands and knees to search the room vainly for his tin of tobacco. He had learned to roll cigarettes in his fourth year in boarding school, smoking one a day and then three every night he had to study for a final. It was just one of the tricks he had been taught by his roommate, whose father worked as an accountant to the Bratva: first trick was faking a fever in order to skip lessons, second was mixing gin and powdered orange juice. Averin, too, taught him the joys of reading Russian pornography, and taught him to say a filthy word in Russian. When his efforts proved futile, Ezra slumped at the dressing table in utter despair, reaching for the flask he kept in several pockets all throughout his room. He lifted it to his lips, and huffed in annoyance once he realised it, too, had been depleted over the course of two weeks. 

Ezra heard a series of soft taps from the window and from the corner of his eye saw that he’d left it ajar this morning, allowing a geometry of light to sliver across the floor, at his feet. The source of the tapping soon revealed itself upon closer scrutiny: a bee was beating its plush body against the glass, frenetically seeking freedom. Ezra walked over to the window to free it, and the curtains lapped at his face before they whipped the breeze like sails. Outside, he spied the gardener on his knees, weeding the rugosa hedge, his back turned to Ezra. He crouched, then finally stood, to smoke a cigarette pinched between two fingers.

Ezra had only met him once, when the man had caught him asleep in the sitting room. He was sent by the valet to work on some circuitry. The lights in the sitting room had been flickering for some time, making it difficult for Ezra to read in the evening, and of course, he had complained to his mother who assured him it was going to be takencare of, _my sweet_ , you know how old the staff is, _there, there._ The only one who was remotely useful was the gardener, apparently, or at least his son, as the _actual_ gardener had retired shortly after Ezra’s grandfather had died. Ezra didn’t bother remembering his name — he was half asleep when the man had introduced himself, thrusting out a dirty hand, and uninterested besides. What’s more the man didn’t leave a very deep impression: his unkempt beard spoke of slovenliness as did his untrimmed hair, grown long and unchecked over his eyes. Now, Ezra almost regretted it, because he was thinking of asking the man for a smoke. 

Ezra shook his head to wean himself of the urge. He was bored, not stupid, and it didn’t do to fraternize with the staff. There were other ways to curb the craving. Ezra decided to take a walk.

Ezra stepped out into the terrace, his bare feet warmed by the crumbling yorkshire stone. It was cooler outside, strangely; the grass tickled his feet and ankles as he negotiated the last three steps to the gravel path. He wore his dressing gown over his pajamas, not caring for propriety, as the staff knew well enough to leave him be. He was the master of the house, after all, could wear what he pleased, but as he approached the general direction of where the rugosa hedges hemmed the marble fountains, he felt increasingly ridiculous, like a child. His hair he held away from his face with a tie, and he could feel a slight breeze dry the dampness from the back of his neck. Ezra contemplated getting a haircut as he tucked an errant curl behind one ear. It wasn’t very masculine to keep one’s hair well beyond chin-level; he disliked how his long hair softened his features considerably, taking away the hard, boyish edges, but his mother liked it, so he grew it long for her. 

The gardener turned just as Ezra approached. He blinked, sucked on his cigarette, before nodding wordlessly in acknowledgement, his face completely blank and unreadable. Ezra didn’t know why he felt suddenly flustered. It must have something to do with the heat, he thought, the way sleeping in the sitting room often made his thoughts lush and dreamy. 

The man had shaved, he realized, since he’d last seen him, the beard gone, replaced by stubble peppered here and there with tiny grey flecks. And his shirt was open partway, revealing a column of tan, tawny skin, a strong chest, built like the hull of a ship.

“Sir,” said the man, drawing Ezra’s attention back to his face, which was a handsome, if rugged face. Ezra had always envied men like him, working class men who were tall and strong and exuded a confident sensuality. Often, he wished he were more like them: a real man who could hold his liquor and swear freely and make bawdy jokes. 

At seventeen, he knew he was of the bookish stock: awkward and gawky, erring on the side of sensitive, lacking an integral component of whatever it was that made men _men._

“Anything I might help you with, Mr Miller?” the man said it not without a touch of sincerity, even though Ezra was, at least a decade younger if not more so. He had an accent, and it rankled Ezra like an itch that he was unable to place it. 

“Mr —” 

“Farrell,” said the man, with a small, private smile. “We met at the —” 

“Yes, yes, you came to fix the lights,” said Ezra irritably. 

Farrell’s brows drew together in confusion though it smoothed away just as quickly, and he smiled again, deepening the crow’s feet wrinkling his brown eyes. “Ah, yes, of course. Are they still giving you trouble, the lights? I could come by again if you needed me. I have the afternoon free, I think.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to take you away from your … _chores_. The hedges have been looking terrible lately. Have we been paying you enough?”

Farrell gave him a startled look that morphed into one of slight irritation. It was meant in jest, any fool would realise that, but it appeared that Farrell had missed the joke and Ezra had not yet earned the familiarity to make such comments. 

“Have they?” said Farrell. sharply. There was an almost mean glint in his eye. “Must be the pesticide then. Switched to a different brand, recently.” He took another puff of his cigarette, then flicked his eyes up and down the length of Ezra, his gaze settling, very briefly, on Ezra’s bare feet. Ezra curled his toes in the grass sheepishly. He wondered what he must look now to the gardener, his hair in a disheveled state, his left cheek creased with pillowmarks from an afternoon nap, wandering around in his great grandfather’s shabby dressing gown, with no shoes on. The gardener must think him crazy; he would, at least, be half-right.

“You’re going to get blisters, runnin’ around in your bare feet like that, sweetie,” said Farrell, finally. “You should head back inside, or at least put some shoes on.”

Ezra opened his mouth to protest, but shut it with a click. He fought the urge to roll his eyes, stamp his foot. He lifted his chin, felt the ugly shape of a rude word tickle the back of his throat. He tamped that down too. “Can you roll me one of your cigarettes?” he said instead. It took every ounce of self control not to huff in annoyance when Farrell simply smiled at him in reply. 

“You smoke then, do you?” Farrell said as he raked a mud-stained hand through his hair. “I’ll be fired if I roll you a cigarette, you do realise that, right? Besides, you’re only a boy; you shouldn’t be smoking at your age. How old are you? Fifteen? Sixteen?” 

“Eighteen in the fall,” Ezra said, but Farrell shrugged like it made no difference to him. Perhaps it didn’t. He lifted his cigarette, pinching it between thumb and forefinger like a chronic smoker, and as if to make a point of savoring it, took a long, slow drag. Farrell blew smoke out of his mouth and nose without fanfare, and it rose, thick and hazy in the still, damp air, making Ezra cough. He flicked what remained of the filter onto the dirt, grounding it under the heel of his boot, compounding it into the grass. Then he picked up his pruning shears, his gardening gloves and hat, and nodded at Ezra once, before going on his way.

* 

Swimming was hardly a past time. The winters in New England were harsh and seeping, and Ezra’s crowded academic calendar left little room for leisure. But swimming had always been a vague interest, like the trombone and the harpsichord, though Ezra never could quite perfect his backstroke. He had taken lessons from a retired German athlete, a requirement as he was coxswain of his school’s rowing team, three years in a row now. He spent enough time in the water to despise it, but the nascent syrupy heat of Milburn gave him an almost nostalgic yearning for the Charles. The pool was out of the question, rendered unusable due to years of neglect, the tiled basin filled with leaves and leaf molds and droppings of various birds and animals, the crumbling cement deck crowded with nettles and a lone shriveled boot lying on its side. The lake then, snaking a long winding swathe behind the estate, shimmering like a gypsy coin under the summer heat. It was quite the trek, if you were up to it, bordered on either side by fields Ezra’s grandfather had sold to a local farmer for his cows to graze on. 

Ezra made a day of it, rising at the crack of dawn to pack himself sandwiches and crackers in a satchel, a dog-eared copy of The Brothers Karamazov which he’d neglected to return at the end of the term. He left the estate after breakfast, armed with nothing but a book to shield himself from the sun, and made the solitary walk to the lake, humming a shapeless tune. Here and there the path curved along, rimmed on either side by long swaying grass. Weeds and chamomile had sprouted in between the cracks of the manmade path which meandered lazily around the woods, and then back again. Ezra was alone, utterly alone, with the larks and the tree frogs, and he almost went into a panic until he stumbled upon the clearing and saw that he had arrived.

He stepped out his shoes and dipped his feet in the water, sighing in relief as his toes brushed the mossy floor. He unpacked a sandwich, eating it in three bite under the generous shade of an oak tree, still with his feet in the water. It was high noon when the idea struck him, as the heat was at its peak. Ezra shed his clothes, first his jacket, then shirt and trousers, then his underclothes which he folded in three before setting down on the embankment. Naked as fish, embarrassed at his own stark paleness, he waded into the water until he was chin-deep, and lay with his head tilted to raise his face to the sun. He shut his eyes against the glare, and proceeded to practice his backstrokes leisurely, knifing through the water in a series of half-starts before finally finding his form. The water was cool and clean, clearing his head of worry. A school of fish glided past him, and he watched, transfixed, as their scales glittered and gleamed in the water. It was an hour later that his peace was interrupted. Ezra, hungry from swimming, was wading towards the shore when he caught a glimpse of a figure in the trees. “Who’s there?” he asked, stupidly, a tremor of nervousness in his voice. He had hoped to be left alone for the most part, and hadn’t accounted for interlopers, deeming the grounds of the estate, and its surrounding wood, safe, at least for the most part. And Ezra was naked, in the water, unable to defend himself should the interloper attack him. He remained submerged in the water, up to his waist, when the figure stepped out and revealed himself sheepishly. It was the gardener, Farrell, his arms raised in a gesture of surrender. “If I had known you would be here, I would have found some place else to sleep.” He whistled at the mess Ezra left on the embankment, his clothes and sandwiches and bookin a haphazard pile, awaiting him. There was a secret smile softening the gardener’s lips, and when he turned his attention back to Ezra, his gaze lingered a beat too long. “There are eels in the water. Best not to swim naked. Didn’t the maids warn you?” Ezra hurried out of the water, red to his toes and jumping foot to foot, Farrell’s laughter making his ears ring though he seemed to be laughing not out of spite but amusement. It was only then that Ezra realised his own nakedness, that he was made aware of how inadequate his body was compared to Farrell whose solid bulk dwarfed him in every possible way. He felt like a schoolgirl, blushing hotly and stammering, out of sorts as he grabbed his trousers from Farrell’s outstretched hands. Farrell left him to it, standing with his back to him, commenting inanely on the weather and how he can smell a storm coming, how cloudless and broody the sky looked. When Ezra was done, his clothes translucent as it clung to his skin, his hair dripping wet lines across his shoulders, Farrell turned again and offered to walk him back to the estate. “I know a shortcut,” he explained, offering Ezra his arm when Ezra almost stumbled on loose soil. Ezra purportedly did not take the proffered arm — he still had his pride — and marched on without further incident. “If we don’t dawdle, we should make it back before it rains.” 

“Rain?” Ezra repeated in disbelief. “It’s not going to rain.” He squinted up at the sky, which looked dismally bright and hazy, and cast Farrell a dubious look which the man shrugged off.

“Oh it is,” Farrell said, reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt for a cigarette. “Just you wait.” He lit his cigarette, popping the muscles of his neck and sighing with relief. He did not offer Ezra a smoke, or his arm once more when Ezra had accidentally skidded on a pebble and scuffed his good leather shoes. The walk home remained quiet, interrupted from time to time by the croak of tree frogs, the croon of birds, and the nervous skitter of animals that called the woods their home. Ezra wanted to ask Farrell a myriad of questions, he wanted a conversation, an exchange of sorts, but was plagued by a feeling of defensiveness, as if he wanted to prove he was bestowing Farrell the rare opportunity of conversation with the master of the house. He did not know why he could barely look him in the eye. He was frightened, a little, by Farrell’s brusqueness, but he knew for a fact Farrell wouldn’t hurt him. He wasn’t stupid.

Sure enough, as Farrell had predicted, it rained on their way back. 

 *

“I hate to say I told you so,” Farrell said, as rain pitter-pattered on the roof above them. They’d sought shelter in a stable, where the local farmer kept his horses and cows, and Ezra rolled his eyes and did not look at Farrell pointedly, for fear of stoking his amusement. He could already hear the mirth in his voice. He crossed his arms in a show of petulance.

“Don’t worry, it’ll peter out, soon enough,” Farrell assured him, laughing and cupping his shoulder, the touch so out of place and oddly familiar that Ezra jumped out his reach. He eyed Farrell oddly, who dropped his hand and scratched the back of his neck, looking sheepish.

“Sorry,” Farrell said. 

Ezra nodded, and pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders. He fought off a sneeze, but the smell of hay tickled his nose incessantly. He sniffed a few times, and rubbed his nose against the edge of one sleeve.

“Any minute now,” Farrell was mumbling. “Rain’s gonna stop, don’t you worry.”

The sounded of his voice was soothing. Ezra found himself strangely content to wait out the rain.

*

He was everywhere, it seemed, now that Ezra had found himself looking. In the morning, he was outside on his knees in the dirt, trimming the hedges, or cutting the grass, putting down his trowel to roll a cigarette as he stood slouching against the mossy wall that fenced the estate. Ezra could hardly ask anyone about him as most of the staff, he was certain, detested his presence. Still, his strange curiosity persisted. He could still not fathom the origins of that accent. 

In the early hours of dawn, when Ezra’s long evenings in the sitting room bled into morning, he heard the sound the man’s laughter in the kitchens, clear and strong as a church bell, amidst the lewd jokes and the ruckus. The staff congregated in the kitchens for breakfast, making short work of the pantry, and once, when Ezra had interrupted their little feast by asking for a cup of coffee, the entire room had descended into stillness, the mood immediately souring like curdled milk. It was Farrell who left the table, unperturbed his presence, to fetch him a pot already brewing on the stove, and to remark on the earliness of the hour. “You aren’t due to wake until seven, you see,” he’d said, reaching for a cup from the cabinet overhead. “Or so I’m told, anyway. Don’t take it against them. They’re of an age where they’re so set in their own ways that they prefer to work on a schedule.” 

Ezra, oddly flustered by this comment, accepted the cup hastily before scurrying back to his room, only to be summoned once it was truly time for breakfast. By then, Farrell was nowhere to be seen again, and Ezra, alone as always, in this strange, unfamiliar house, with a plateful of half-cooked ham and eggs, and a cup of lukewarm coffee at his table, sighed deeply.

Ezra knew it would not do to stew in his room for too long. Lying in his bed reading _Hardy_ with his chin propped up on one hand, while pins and needles traveled up his arm, gave him the most terrible headache.It was half the writing, truth be told, as he was not a fan of romances, but more of it was due to the fact his room had such weak lighting despite the fact he kept his curtains drawn during the day. He hardly moved positions except to flip the pages of his book, intent to get most of his reading done before the midday sun disappeared behind the hills. He had written his friends again a few days ago, describing in detail the books he had finished, the cow dung potent in the air every morning after breakfast, his staff’s detached behaviour. He hated it here. At least once, he wished it was the estate that had been nearly razed to the ground and not his family home.

Averin had confirmed in his last letter that he was visiting in two weeks, and it was the only good news Ezra looked forward to aside from the family dinner in Rockport before summer’s end. His mother phoned him the other day to tell him repair of the east wing was well underway. It wouldn’t be long before Ezra could come home again, but the vague promise only left him restless and frantic with longing.

If his mother didn’t hate the estate so much, as it reminded him of her father, and unhappy childhood, she would have visited him, Ezra knew. But she often changed the subject, or grew distant to the point of unfriendliness, whenever Ezra broached the subject of a visit that he refrained from bringing it up ever again and instead moved the conversation to complaints about the food. 

Ezra was in the middle of penning another letter to his friends — Caldwell had written back to echo his sentiments of boredom — when the lights in his room dimmed and flickered. It was late in the afternoon; the sky had deepened to the dusky autumnal hues redolent of the hour, and before long would darken to evening. Ezra wouldn’t have minded the sorry state of lighting if he didn’t have a letter to finish. He could move to the sitting room, or light a candle, he supposed, but the house was wired with electricity for god’s sake, and there were people to fix the lighting for him. This was his grandfather’s estate, and he had every right to order the staff. 

He called for the maid. The maid called for the valet who called for the gardener who appeared two hours later, right before dinner, smelling of liquor. Farrell had been in town, apparently, drinking as it was his day off. He eyed Ezra with disbelief though he said nothing, as he followed the maid up to Ezra’s room. In no time at all, the lighting situation was fixed. Ezra had no business overseeing Farrell’s work, but he felt he needed to be present if Farrell thought he could get away with tracking mud all over his floors with those boots. He’d overheard the maids talking about Farrell’s drinking habits, earlier, when one of them had gone to town to fetch him. It was not that he was a fan of the bottle, just that the behaviour that came along with it, that troubled Ezra. _Farrell frequented the whorehouses when he drank._ Of course, calling them whorehouses was outdated, and an unmarried man Farrell’s age with a decent enough income could very well do what he pleased… but propriety — oh fuck it, Ezra just hated to be kept waiting.

“You smell terrible,” Ezra found himself saying, wrinkling his nose as Farrell unscrewed the old light bulb and disposed of it in a canvas bag. 

Farrell raised an eyebrowand then shook his head. “Well, good thing I’m not paid to smell good, then,” he huffed.

“And you’re _late,”_ Ezra continued. “Do you even know what time it is? I was writing a letter and you made me lose my momentum.” He was well aware that he sounded like a child in a sulk, but Ezra couldn’t seem to help himself. Hardly anyone spoke to him in this house, and now that Farrell was here, he seemed like the perfect receptacle for Ezra’s quiet, desperate rage.

“Tragic,” Farrell said. He flipped a switch, and light flooded back into the room, making both Ezra and the maid startle and blink. “Well, that solves your problem. You needed new bulbs. You could write your letters now, in solitary comfort. Is there anything else your _majesty_ wants me to do?”

The maid coughed, stifling her laughter.

Ezra felt his ears boil. It rankled him, to be talked down to, like a child, though he was master of the house. Did any of these people even realise that? Did the gardener not realise that? “Don’t patronize me. I could easily get you fired.”

Farrell looked at him, then away, and for a brief moment before he turned Ezra thought he saw a flash of irritation, gone before he could blink, like a wisp of smoke. “I apologize. Clearly, I spoke out of turn.” But if anything, Farrell sounded condescending. 

Ezra clenched his fists at his sides. He was being mocked, he knew, and had never wanted to hit anyone in his life before today. He could feel his patience fraying, with it his shame and embarrassment mounting the longer Farrell stood there silently waiting for his response. Ezra could never seem to say the right thing in his company, their conversations sparse and full of hidden barbs, and sudden turns that made him dislike himself more than he disliked Farrell’s disrespectful attitude toward him. He wasn’t like his parents, who managed their staff very well with a severity he sometimes envied. None of them would ever dare to talk back. Servants were supposed to be meek, and docile, invisible. And it bothered Ezra that Farrell had the audacity to work him up into a fit.

“We’re done now,”Ezra said, affecting a calm he didn’t feel. 

Farrell nodded. “Are you sure? Because once I’m out that door, I’m as good as —” before he could finish the statement, Ezra had raised a hand, striking him palm-open, in the face. It left a stinging red mark in the shape of his fingers, across Farrell’s right cheek. The impact of the slap made Farrell turn his head away, and it was with dawning horror that Ezra realised what he’d done, what he allowed himself to fall prey to in a moment of weakness. 

“I—” he said, intent to apologize and correct his mistake, but Farrell had already lifted a hand to placate him,and that was the end of the conversation. Farrell nodded his head, once, as he unhinged his jaw and swiped a hand through his hair. 

“That was indeed very sobering,” he said, almost with a touch of amusement. But he didn’t smile, and his face was placid and unreadable, as sure as his next two words were, which were, “Thank you,” He left without another word, with the maid in tow. 

Ezra collapsed on the bed, knees weak with nerves, and flexed his fingers to feel the remnant sting of his slap. Good god, he thought, flinging an arm over his flushed face. What had he done?

*

There was no turning back, it seemed, and news that he had struck the gardener traveled fast in the next few days. The maids, if it were possible, treated him with newfound respect, though he could feel that half of it was nerves for fear their employ, too, would be compromised if they treated him any more badly than they already did. The food stayed as bland as ever, and it wasn’t until the end of the week that Ezra saw Colin again, weeding the path by the terrace. 

Ezra remained in the sitting room for a good half hour, watching him work, his heart so heavy in his chest he thought he was having a panic attack. The French Windows led into the terrace, and Ezra’s view was half-obscured by the velvet curtains held loosely by a gold tasseled ribbon, but he still craned his neck to keep Farrell within his line of sight. Then — just as Farrell made to leave, Ezra shot out of the reading chair, throwing the doors open and hurrying out the terrace where the sun-baked stone stung the soles of his bare feet. Farrell raised both eyebrows at him, shaking his head. “What happened to your shoes?” 

Ezra coloured again, fighting off a haughty remark, before he tiptoed all the way to the grass where the soil was cooler, more forgiving. That put him standing directly in front of Farrell who raised his eyebrows even higher and planted his hands on his hips. “Yes?”

“I,” Ezra said. He dipped his head in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. About the other day.”

“Well?” said Ezra expectantly.

Farrell said, tilting his head to the side, “Well what?”

“What do you have to say to that?”

Farrell laughed, throwing his head back. It seemed to Ezra that he laughed longer than necessary, as if only to embarrass him. Then Farrell straightened and pointed at Ezra's feet. “Put some shoes on. We're going for a walk.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. gotta love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> gotta love - au where Colin and Ezra meet at the Sunday food market. Ezra hates Colin, but does he really? written May 9th 2017.

* * *

 

“Yoga moms at four o’clock,” Rob says.

Ezra snorts but turns his head in the direction Rob is pointing. The yoga moms are just a handful of regulars at the weekend flea market, though they’re by no means Ezra’s target demographic. They’re patrons of the very popular very hip vegan stall ran by a heavily tattooed Irishman Ezra is convinced had once been a felon. On cue the women join the noontime crowd already thronged in front of Farrell’s BLD (Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner), the ingeniously named stall currently driving everyone out of business, Ezra included.

Next to him, dusting the vintage soap and toothbrush holder with a make-up brush, Rob sighs and shakes his head. “If it’s any consolation,” he says, scratching his beard thoughtfully. “I think they’re probably just drawn by his sex appeal and not the food.”

“What appeal? His tattoos are horrid,” Ezra points out, incredulous.

Rob hums. “Are they?”

*

Ezra is often accused of being a hipster but it’s not his fault that he likes what people often consider “hipster”. He doesn’t even know what that word means to be entirely honest. So what if he likes hanging out at thrift stores, collecting vintage cameras, and sings in a lo-fi cover band? Generally, he doesn’t care what other people think, but it’s harder to ignore the comparison when he’s at the flea market and there are large congregations of people in flannel and floral prints, all sporting the same haircut as Ezra, with the ratio split between guys and girls. Most of them are shopping for clothes, though some of them have wandered over to the infamous vegan stall, drawn by the bold monochromatic typeface spelling out BLD in alternating black and grey.

In comparison, Ezra’s stall is a joke, like a child’s attempt at a garage sale, an accumulation of various odds and ends, botched DIY projects, and his dad’s old Bruce Springsteen record collection which he’d inherited after moving out of Jersey for college. He sells clothing too though they’re mostly pieces he gets on BOGO deals on Ebay, or various thrift shops in Venice Beach, branded overruns with the tags ripped out. There’s a padded bomber jacket going for $7.50 and it has a teary-eyed cat embroidered on the back, the words “weeping puss” in bubble print above it. No one’s bought it yet, because people are lacking in taste, apparently, but customers will be arriving in droves, Ezra knows, sooner rather than later. They’ll see the myriad of tie-dyed shirts and feathered caps hanging from Ezra’s DIY clothing rack, made from industrial piping and distressed plywood — on sale for $112.00 — and realise they’ve been missing out. He’ll make a small fortune, then. 

Truthfully, Ezra doesn’t make a lot of sales, but it doesn’t really bother him as often as he makes a big deal out of it. He has a babysitting gig on the weekdays, works part-time as a cafe server at the Barnes and Noble up at the Farmer’s Market, and makes enough money from both jobs to pay for the room he sublets from a middle-aged Indian couple whom he has yet to see hide or hair of as they travel so often out of state. Moving to LA had been an expensive decision — he can hardly afford paying for gas — but there’s comfort in being the furthest he’s ever been away from home and his parents. These days their disappointment hardly phases him. He sleeps well at night.

*

Ezra doesn’t have enemies, but if you held him at gunpoint, he’d confess that he harboured a deep seated hatred for everything BLD. It’s pretentious, all the way through, from the way the food is packaged and served (recycled paper cones) to the flavours of smoothies (More Than A Mouthful, Can You Feel The Beet, Naked Lunch). But if there’s something Ezra hates even more than the obvious Instagram cash-in, it’s the owner of the stall himself: Colin.

Ezra is driving into the parking lot of the flea market when he catches sight of the guy trudging towards his car, yoga mat hoisted over one shoulder, wayfarers hanging off his nose. The sun is beating down on the pavement but Colin doesn’t seem to notice, clad in nothing but grey sweatpants and a sporty headband that pushes most of the hair out of his face. Colin has a number of tattoos all over his torso, most of which are fading, a large cross on his right forearm, a tribal design covering his left bicep, and just above it on his shoulder, a red heart with someone’s name scrawled in the middle, an awful imitation of a sailor’s tattoo — probably the name of an old flame. Ezra rolls his eyes and snorts as he passes Colin, securing a prime parking spot under the shade and turning off the ignition He’s buried to the elbows in the trunk of his car, heaving boxes of old clothes to the ground, when he hears a quiet tap on the roof.He jerks up immediately, hitting his head on the lid of the trunk, and fixes a glare at his interloper. 

“ _Ouch_ ,” says Colin in sympathy. He jerks his chin at the boxes in Ezra’s trunk. “Need a little help with that?”

Ezra bites down on the urge to snap. This close, he can see the sheen of sweat coating Colin’s chest, the uneven patches of hair dotting his sternum. His neck and chest are damp, flushed from the heat. Colin has another tattoo above his left pectoral, of what looks like a lotus flower. Ezra drags his gaze away, ignoring the prickling in his face, though he largely has the heat to blame for the sudden catch in his breath, the skip in his pulse. He hates this guy. “Thanks, but I’m fine,” he says, as politely as he can manage. “I can carry these myself.” 

Colin, without asking for permission, dives for a box in the trunk anyway, hefting it under one arm to balance on his hip. “You sure about that? I mean, it’s no bother at all. I’ll walk you to your stall, if you like.”

“Maybe you should put a shirt on, first,” says Ezra, shutting the lid of the trunk with a heavy thunk and narrowly avoiding injuring Colin’s fingers.

Colin chuckles, possessing, apparently, the decency to look abashed, glancing down at himself and seeming to realise his state of undress. He holds up a finger at Ezra before jogging over to where his pickup truck is parked under the shade. Ezra watches him, Colin’s back shining in damp patches under the sun as he fishes a shirt from the passenger side of his truck and tosses it over one shoulder. 

Colin puts the shirt on as he’s crossing the parking lot, only barely managing to pull the hem over his chest as soon as he’s within hearing range.

“Your shirt is on backwards,” Ezra tells him. 

“Oh,” Colin laughs, completely unselfconscious. Because he has no shame,he takes his shirt off again, giving Ezra an eyeful he didn’t need, the material pulling taut across his shoulders and biceps _._ Ezra is busy deciding if he should throw himself in the path of a speeding object when Rob’s voice cuts through the haze of his thoughts. Ezra looks around — Rob is waving the hand clutching his phone in the air and gesturing wildly as if he’d caught Ezra giving Colin a blowjob right there in the open.

“Dude, you’re late,” Rob says, by way of greeting, punching him lightly on the shoulder. “You weren’t answering your phone.”

“I was driving,” Ezra points out. “I can’t text and drive.”

“Oh, hi Mr Farrell,” Rob says, a little awkwardly.

“It’s just Colin, Rob,” Colin says, as if they’ve had this conversation before. 

“Right,” Rob says, a little more awkwardly. He looks between Ezra and Colin, before shrugging and picking up the remaining box at their feet. “I’ll take it from here, Mr Farrell.”

“You sure?” Colin presses, both eyebrows raised. 

“Yeah,” Ezra interrupts. “We can manage. _Thanks_.” He takes the box from Colin, and plasters a fake smile that hurts his teeth. As Colin trudges back to his truck, Rob’s elbow jabs Ezra sharply in the ribs. 

“You keep flirting with the competition. That’s why he’s going to drive us out of business!”

“I was — I was not flirting!”

“You sighed longingly when he left.”

“What? _What?_ You know what, fuck you.” 

Ezra starts walking away.  Rob's laughter accompanies him all the way down the parking lot. 

 


	4. you're no jd salinger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you're no jd salinger - _seven psycopaths_ -inspired AU where Colin is a writer fighting writer's block (lol) and Ezra is sent to help him out of it. featuring a cameo from Sam Rockwell, because why not. written May 2nd, 2017.

* * *

 

Writer’s block has always been the enemy, but rather than let it consume him, Colin chooses to ride it out. He spends long stretches doing absolutely nothing, entering a meditative state short of falling into a coma. When that loses its novelty, he goes to Vegas and spends hours at the slot machines, listlessly hitting buttons over and over again and burning through his savings like a madman. He bets on anything from NASCAR to horse races and drinks his weight in gin and tonics, and much like every other insomniac in the Strip, capitulates between the sports bars and poker tables. This kind of downswing in mood is nothing unfamiliar to him — Colin has a tendency to drive himself into a corner creatively when perilously close to a deadline. Each time is a little different but sooner or later the feeling settles, like an enormous wave slow to crest. It’s all about hitting that peak. He just needs to wait it out.

He’s at a strip club, being propositioned by a leggy blond, when a call from his editor comes through in spite of the poor reception. Colin plugs a finger into one ear to isolate the static from the horrendous club music, holding up a free hand to excuse himself from arguing with the bartender about tips.

“How’s the desert?” Rockwell asks. 

Colin scratches at his involuntary beard. “I can hear you so clearly that it’s like you’re in the very same room. Funny, that.” He makes a show of looking around the club. “Did you follow me all the way to Vegas? It seems your tracking skills have improved somewhat.”

“Maybe you just weren’t as important as before,” Rockwell intones. “Listen, I’m all for banging strippers and doing meth, or how ever it is you cope with writer’s block, but the deadline is in twelve days and you’ve only sent me a tenth of your manuscript. The clock is ticking, Colin. You need to get your ass back to New York and start writing or Hyperion’s gonna want that check back that you blew on strippers.”

“It’s amazing how well you know me,” Colin says, after a pause, not without a hint of sarcasm. If he sounds petulant, he refuses to admit it. He is not one to apologize for his _proclivities_. 

“Yeah, well,” says Rockwell, as if hearing his thoughts. “I try, Colin. I really do.”

Colin pays for his drink with crumbled dollar bills and wends his way out the club, stepping out into the blindingly lit, smog-choked street. Everywhere are billboards rippling with advertisements. It gives him a slight case of myopia, as if the chronic drinking hasn’t already.

Rockwell continues on and on about meetings and interviews, and about a book launch next month while Colin tries vainly not to doze in his lack of interest. 

“By the way,I sent my assistant to pick you up,” Rockwell says, just as the taxi rolls over another speedbump and causes Colin to his his head on the ceiling, “By my estimation, my guy should be in Vegas in about an hour if he isn’t there already. Text me the address of your hotel and I’ll send him your way.”

Colin grunts non-committally.

“Oh, and Colin?” Rockwell adds, right before Colin hangs up. “Remember to play nice. This kid is interning for the summer and I kind of owe his parents one, if you know what I mean.”

Before Colin can even frown at his phone, the line disconnects.


	5. when mr farrell came to dine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> when mr farrell came to dine - au where colin is ezra's father's 'colleague'. ezra's attraction to the much older gentleman is imminent and instant, and it begins an affair the dynamics of which neither of them sees coming especially after ezra's parents die in a ~tragic~ accident leaving colin as his sole guardian. written may 2nd, 2017. also i cannot write period stories???

* * *

 

 

When Ezra was thirteen, a man called Mr Farrell came to dine with the family. He wore an expensive coat with a black velvet collar, a signet ring on the pinkie of his left finger, and walked with the striding gait of one who seemed to be perpetually on his way to an important meeting. It was not uncommon for colleagues of Ezra’s father to join them for dinner — businessmen, sometimes even his tailor often came to sup at their table — but it was clear that Mr. Farrell was not like any of these guests. For one, he outclassed them all, arriving a few minutes after the main course had been served, in a deep purple Bentley that was almost black under a certain light. Ezra’s father did not care for people who were unpunctual or rude, especially at his dinner table, but he seemed completely unruffled when Mr. Farrell rang the doorbell, already twenty minutes into the roast lamb.

A matter had needed seeing to, said Mr Farrell, taking the empty seat across Ezra, offering no more than that as an excuse as Ezra’s father poured him a glass of wine and assured him that it was nothing, that dinner was just getting started, and guests were always welcome no matter the hour they arrived, a strange pronouncement, Ezra thought, as his father compulsively followed schedules to the minute. Dinner always began at 7, and it was already 7:21. In nine minutes, tea and coffee would be served, alongside the digestive biscuits and fennel seeds Ezra’s father liked to take after a heavy meal. 

Mr Farrell had already doffed his hat at the door, and had done away with his fine leather gloves, tucking them inside the pocket of his great coat which he hung in the closet in the entryway. Ezra knew he should not be staring, that it was rude to openly gawk at guests, impressive though they may be, but he was seized by a strange compunction to look, and look, cataloguing every detail till he had each burned into memory: Mr Farrell’s opal cufflinks, the silver that threaded his hair, his five o’clock shadow, which he seemed to be sporting more out of preference than a failure to shave before dinner, his warm brown eyes, and thick eyebrows, more expressive than the rest of his face which remained unreadably placid throughout dinner. Even Ezra’s mother, it seemed, could not help admiring their guest; it didn’t seem like she was breathing at all.

Ezra must have been caught staring because he heard Mr Farrell say his name, though it was only after Ezra’s mother pinched him sharply in the side that he was finally rousted from his thoughts. 

Ezra blushed, though he didn’t know why at the time, when he caught Mr Farrell’s gaze from across the table. Perhaps it was out of shame, or embarrassment, or the fact that Mr Farrell was the most handsome man to ever walk through their threshold that Ezra excused himself, stumbling, from dinner, keeping his eye level with the table because he didn’t know where else to look. He left without waiting for permission from his father, locking himself in his room in an attempt to cool down his head. 

Later when Mr Farrell had left, Ezra overheard his mother talking about him with the cook, complaining about how he never once touched the lemon tart which she had spent all afternoon working on and which was so often the guests’ favourite. 

Despite that, they had him frequently for dinner though the precise nature of his affiliation with Ezra’s father remained unclear.

But it didn’t matter; Ezra thought he was the most interesting person to have ever come into their lives. He was more well-traveled than anyone Ezra had ever met. Mr Farrell lived, for a time, in Europe, which somewhat explained the accent. He showed Ezra the places he’d been, once, leading him to the study where Ezra’s father had framed a map behind his reading desk. Mr Farrell ran his index finger across all of Europe — Italy, the United Kingdom, France. He’d lived in Budapest, and then Moldova, a small country between Romania and Ukraine, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. It was a hard life, he said, as if he were confessing, but a hard life breeds character. 

 

 

 


	6. this one will bring it back home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this one will bring it back home - non au. colin ruminates after sleeping with ezra for the first time. _written May 13th 2017_. actually finished but too short to have posted at the time.

* * *

 

Colin wakes up naked. Generally, he goes to bed naked, or as naked as he can get away with with a housekeeper that never knocked. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise to wake up without clothes on, but it takes him two, maybe three minutes to realise that the other half of the bed isn’t as empty as he’s used to it being.

Ezra isn’t wearing much, either, just a pair of white boxer briefs that, because of the blue-black light of the morning, look almost translucent. 

He’s sprawled out on his stomach the way he’d fallen asleep the night before, one hand tucked underneath him, his face turned away. He has a birthmark, there on his right shoulder blade, the colour of a port-wine stain, in the shape of a teardrop. The pale slope of his back is the most beautiful thing Colin has ever seen, and Colin fights the urge to lean over and kiss him.

Colin knows for a fact that he liked women, that before he’d met Ezra, he wouldn’t have given other _guys_ a second glance.

He’d always known, empirically, that Ezra was attractive, _even cute_ , but it was one of those things that Colin knew about him, a fact that didn’t seem to matter until suddenly it did. One of those things he’d taken as fact: Ezra is sweet; he hates movies where any of the animals died. He grew up in Jersey. He was _cute,_ not in the way kids or stuffed teddy bears were cute, just — _cute_. It often bought Ezra a lot of favours from other people; he makes _that_ face, and it’s like turning on a switch, and something inside Colin is propelled to action. He supposes it’s the same way for others; they just can’t help wanting to help Ezra, not because they thought he was incapable of doing anything by himself, but because he inspired a fierce protective instinct. 

No one has ever made him feel this way, unmoored and without knowing exactly why. None of it seemed to matter until last night when Ezra curled into his embrace like a comma and inched up his face and asked to be kissed. Colin could still remember how Ezra had looked at him then, there in the dark with his eyes wide with nervous expectation, his hands fisting Colin’s shirt. They hadn’t done much except sleep in the same bed together, and even that they did sparingly, afraid they’d get caught. 

When Ezra let Colin undress him, Colin knew there was no turning back. It was probably a terrible idea to sleep with your co-star, age difference or no, but at that time all he could think about was Ezra _, Ezra, Ezra_. It drove Colin crazy how much he wanted him. His dad always said that what you wanted too much couldn’t be good for you, but it was hard to say no when Ezra was right _there_ underneath him, sweet and shivery, his skin soft wherever Colin touched it. They didn’t do much, really, the night before, and it was over much too soon; they jerked each other off and then went to bed, hardly a word passing between them save for a proprietary good night. Still there was no denying it: they’d crossed the line.

Looking at Ezra now, his body slack in sleep, Colin wonders if that’ll be the last time. The clock on the nightstand glows red in the soft light of the morning, announcing the time - 4:14 - and Colin sighs as he heaves himself up on his feet. He staggers to the bathroom to piss,but doesn’t turn on any of the lights, afraid it’d wake Ezra. 

Colin can hardly make out his reflection in the water-spotted mirror but he can imagine what his eyes must look like; nervous probably, unsure. He towels his face dry and freezes when he sees Ezra stumbling out of bed sleepily. His first instinct is to cover his crotch with the towel in his hand but Ezra doesn’t seem to notice him. He lumbers to the bathroom, shouldering his way past Colin before closing the door. 

When Ezra emerges a couple of minutes later, he grins sleepily up at Colin, looking almost surprised to see him by the door. And he’s just like a little kid, with his face creased with pillow marks and his hair standing in tufts at the back of his head. Colin struggles not to touch him, lest he jump away or tell him to fuck off. 

“Hey,” Ezra says, leaning against the doorjamb. “It’s early,”

“Hey, yourself,” Colin says, back. 

Then Ezra smiles, softly, andColin makes a split decision to stop pussyfooting around and just get on with it. He hooks one arm around Ezra to pulls him close, flush against his body. There’s a moment of hesitation but Colin kisses him right after, pressing them hip to hip, groin to groin, lifting Ezra, a little, off his feet. He’s embarrassed at how hard their proximity makes him that he almost shifts away, but Ezra wraps his arms around his shoulders and reels him back. 

When they pull back for air, Colin studies his face for any signs of uncertainty, or rejection, but all he sees are Ezra’ clear eyes staring back at him, sincere with intent. He’s beautiful, so beautiful, Colin thinks, with his soft mouth and even softer hands and Colin wants to map every inch of his body with his hands and tongue. He lifts Ezra off the floor with a grunt and Ezra, wrapping his legs around Colin’s hips, laughs as he tips his head back and it’s the most wonderful sound Colin’s probably heard, _ever_. 

“You’re naked,” Ezra points out, as if he’s only realised, as if his arms aren’t curled around Colin’s neck and he isn’t hard either, the flush high in his cheeks.

“I know,” Colin says. 

“Take me to bed,” Ezra tells him, and then, “—don’t close the blinds,” and Colin laughs, knowing: it’s okay, they’re going to be okay.

 

 

 


End file.
